IMPROVEMENT OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 109 



VILMORIN'S IMPROVEMENT OF CULTIVATED 

 PLANTS. 



This very interesting pampMet ^ is a collection and reprint 

 of several of Louis Vilmorin's important communications to 

 the Central Agricultural Society of France and to the Acad- 

 emy of Sciences : to which is prefixed a French translation 

 of a memoir upon the Amelioration of the Wild Carrot, con- 

 tributed by his venerable father to the Transactions of the 

 London Horticultural Society (but not before published in 

 the vernacular of the author), which memoir, as the younger 

 Vilmorin informs us, was the point of departure for his own 

 investigations in this field, and even contains the germ of 

 most of the ideas which he has since developed upon the the- 

 ory of the amelioration of the plants from the seed. These 

 papers claim the attention of the philosophical naturalist, no 

 less than of the practical horticulturalist. 



Most of our esculents are deviations from the natural state 

 of the species, which have arisen under the care and labor of 

 man in very early times. New varieties of these cultivated 

 races are originated almost every year, indeed ; but between 

 these particular varieties, the differences, however well 

 marked, are not to be compared for importance with those 

 changes which the wild plant has generally undergone in 

 assuming the esculent state. In this amelioration or altera- 

 tion, as in other cases, c^est le premier pas qui coute. For 

 the altered race, once originated, has more stability than the 

 wild stock ; it accordingly tends not only to degenerate (as 

 the cultivator would term it) towards its original and less 

 useful state, but also to sport into new deviations, in various 

 directions, with a freedom and facility not manifested by its 

 wild ancestors. This explains the readiness with which we 

 continually obtain new varieties of those esculent plants which 

 have been a long time in cultivation, while a newly-introduced 



1 Notice sur V Amelioration des Plantes par le Semis et Considerations 

 sur VHeredite dans les Vegetaux. Par M. Louis Vilmorin. Paris, 1859. 

 (American Journal of Science and Arts, 2 ser., xxvii. 440.) 



